Background Stories
by MeyRevived2
Summary: Shedding a light on sections of X yet unseen. characters and background players are exposed, a small story out of thier lives is told
1. Kanoe

Disclamer: I don't own X. I own nothing but my ideas of Clamp's characters.

Many thanks to my beta, Cait-sama

**Author's note: **this story is an attempt to draw some kind of a background story for parts of X's character's lives that Clamp did not light for us. It is not a statement but a mere opinion.

* * *

_The Office Lady is a still evolving part of Japan's corporate culture. The term dates back to the postwar economic boom, which brought significant numbers of women into the white-collar labor force for the first time (with so many men having been killed in the war). --_

_-- As before, the cultural expectation is still for a woman to work a few years, then marry and leave the office. This is common enough that, at the close of the 1980s, a woman's professional "life expectancy" from hiring to marriage was about 6.5 years. Some OLs are kept on staff only to serve tea, greet costumers, run errands, and serve as decoration._

_Patrick Drazen, Anime Explosion._

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* * *

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**Kanoe: The Office Lady**

Shimako and Keiiji walked into my office, holding their hands and blushing.

I raised my eyes from scanning through the Boss's incoming mail to see them and transform for them.

Spread those lips until they'll split your face in two. Sprinkle some glitter in your eyes. Speed up your actions to show excitement. Turn on the heat coming from your skin to make you look beaming.

And here you have the finished result: from the usually grey and dry Kanoe that always sits shriveled behind her desk, a new and improved Kanoe, a completely brand new person, emerges!

All made up for this stupid moment when they'll tell me.

Tell me that Shimako is getting married to Keiiji after their year of small office flirts turning into small demanding hints leading to dates.

Shimako.

A fragile young woman, twenty three years of age, dark eyes, thin black hair like any other girl in Japan. Small fragile build. No ability to grow fingernails strong enough to be long and pretty.

At first I filed her as just another little girl who lost her way home and wandered into our office as I call the other OLs I work with.

But her small sharp eyes behind the large thick lenses of her glasses told me otherwise.

She watched everything, putting all that data inside of her, taking it out only when needed and in the most perfect condition and formulating, after analyzing it perfectly.

She saw Yuto leaving my office a lot and the condition I was in afterwards (I only allowed myself to blush a little! My hair was re-combed, my lipstick reapplied, all the buttons in my shirt and skirts closed perfectly) and smiled at me merrily, praising me of how I had such good taste in men.

I spent dozens of lunch breaks with her, just talking, gossiping and laughing. We never spoke about work, we talked about ourselves and the world around us.

Shimako had a nasty habit of sneaking Playgirl magazines to our lunch breaks. We spent many breaks comparing the average Japanese male to the black or blond gaijins completely exposed across the magazine's pages. One time we giggled so hard that five floors below us heard our laughter.

Shimako was different in her wit and brightness. She shone out like a precious gem amongst tens of small grey office ladies who sat there shuffling papers and tea cups for their bosses, awaiting the day they will be taken away from here by a knight in shining armor.

Keiiji is one of the Boss's advisors (financial advisor!...Maybe cultural?...foreign delegations advisor...!...ah who cares). The moment he laid eyes on Shimako I saw how he marked her as target.

I joked about it with Shimako and she laughed so hard that I was sure his attempts would be stopped.

She promised me she wouldn't cave in.

She broke that promise.

It's not that Keiiji is such a bad guy. He's not the big bad conniving wolf I'm trying to picture him as, it's just that…….

I thought I wasn't alone…..I thought I found a friend who wouldn't go down on her knees as the social expectations from her trample all over her….

But I was mistaken.

I chat with the soon-to-be-married couple then brush them away, pretending that I'm drowning in a sea of paperwork and the Boss will soon want his tea ready.

They nod and leave, waving goodbye merrily.

Goodbye Shimako……

Now I am truly alone.

It doesn't matter because I won't be alone for very long.

* * *

I am not the typical Office Lady. I do not think I'm an Office Lady at all!

In a sense I am an Office Lady.

I make tea for the Boss. I wear things that make me a good decoration. I run errands. I deal with the paperwork. I fuss around the Boss as if I am his mother (men must be completely unable to mature if they spend their lives running from one motherly figure to the other….and yet voters, customers and citizens all choose _them_ for leadership instead of women….why!). I let workers higher in rank and experience sneak a pet on my behind along with a random flirty comment.

On the outside I am the perfect Office Lady, though office gossip is so busy over my late age and how I have yet to find a husband that even at night in my bed I can hear them buzzing around my head like angry bees.

But I am not an Office Lady.

I hunted Yuto down like a sniper, practically squeezed him against the wall before I kissed him. I have him spun around my little finger with such ease it makes me laugh. The prettiest worker in the whole building (according to a survey started by the small grey OLs from Citizen Taxing department) and I have him on a leash.

_He_ comes to _me_ on all fours to put in a good word and get his request for a few days off approved.

_He_ takes _my_ small sexual harassments like a bitter pill, as something you just have to go through as a part of being the office worker in corporate Japan.

He smiles so wonderfully when he arrives into my office for a short, 'briefing about the Boss's latest whims' even if he later comments on how I tore him from his important work.

I am not an Office Lady because Satsuki turned the Boss's computer to a small fireworks show when he placed his hand on my thigh.

I smiled, joking that the spirit of computers does not want him to hit on me. The Boss smiled but I could see how his big fat cheeks shook a bit like they do whenever he hides his fear.

I am not an Office Lady because I will not get married. Ever. Especially not to anyone in the office.

I've been hit on by so many other office workers who apparently see me as a challenge, a shrew to be tamed, that I can hardly walk out of the building without being stalked or 'accompanied' by this 'gentleman' or another.

The Sakurazukamori sends me a small gothic jet broach (a hidden obsession of mine, how did he know? I have no idea and I don't care) for every fifth office worker I inform him of.

His shiki hovers above me, awaiting my signal, and if the gentleman escorting me is getting on my nerves he soon vanishes in a storm of sakura.

I wear my broaches like army medals. Whenever someone at the office pisses me off I brush my fingers against the cold gems and remember my powers.

I am not an office lady.

As I take the elevator down to the basement I transform. I shed my grey camouflage cloak and show my true colors.

I beam of red, black and gold. I beam of power.

I gather these Dragons of Earth to save the world.

I am full of power; I am in control. I am the leader.

I am not just another Office Lady _here_. Here I am Kanoe.

Only at night do I allow myself to shed the glorious cloak of Kanoe, Leader and Collector of the Dragons of Earth.

When I lay in bed and think of why I'm doing all of this.

This is the real me; without masks and costumes, without big words and cunning ideas.

This is the real Kanoe.

* * *

"Kanoe! Kanoe! Help me!"

I stumble over to my sister's room. My legs are numb because I sat the wrong way when I did my homework.

Hinoto sits on her bed, crying. Her arms are stretched forward, grabbing air that did not contain me yet, pulling the invisible chord that will pull me to her side.

"What is it, nesan?" I run up to sit on the bed at her side.

She gropes me, feeling my shoulders and face. "I…." she cries in desperation, "I can't see anything," she breaks into violent sobs.

Her room is dark, the shutters on the window are closed so that the early noon sun cannot get in.

"Mother wanted you to dream again, so she put you to sleep," I talk to myself as my bigger sister curls herself on my lap like a battered puppy begging for a soft harmless touch and affection.

I am only fifteen, why should I baby-sit my eighteen year old sister so?

Mother tucked her in for sleep like the men with the government suits told her to.

They spoke a lot about Hinoto's potential and my mother agreed.

She's locking Hinoto in her room to sleep, drowning my sister in a never ending night where she'll sleep and dream of never ending futures. Dream and never wake up.

Mother is so deeply drowned in transforming my sister that she lets me drift away to whatever direction I want in life.

She stopped pressing me to study hard and do my homework like a good student.

She stopped calling me over to the kitchen so that I would learn how to cook and become a good housewife one day.

She forgot to sign me up to an after school club.

She doesn't care when I come back home with a note from my teacher about my bad behavior or lack of study.

She doesn't care when I go out with my much older friends and return, reeking of alchohol and strange smelling smoke, at 4:50AM.

I learnt how to stand on my own two feet. I learnt how to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner while mother is in Hinoto's room interrogating her about her latest dreams.

I learnt how to time myself and schedule my day so that I will be able to read my books, watch my favorite shows on TV, do my homework and study for my tests.

All those things go through my mind as my sister sobs between my arms. It fills me with a vain hope that runs rampant in my head until I feel giddy and restless. I am only a teenager and so I am prone to rash decisions and quick acts about them.

"Nesan?" I say in the sweetest voice I can muster, "Do you want to go shopping?"

Hinoto sniffs and raises her big eyes to me.

They are turning brighter and brighter in color as her developing blindness shuts the light of the world from her.

"Shopping?" she asks in her gentle, high pitched voice. "Mother will be angry…"

"Mother is having her afternoon nap, mother won't notice." I smile like I saw an evil character in my favorite anime do.

Hinoto looks towards the door expecting mother to show up there and yell at us both for plotting against her like that.

But mother is having her afternoon nap, she can't hear us.

"All the girls in my class go shopping with their sisters, it's a must. We can get you some new clothes."

Hinoto stopped going out of the house when she started dreaming and so mother doesn't bother her with shopping for new items to replace these age old rags she's wearing now.

She stopped taking me out shopping too, but I told you about me already.

"We'll have a wonderful afternoon out, what do you think nesan?"

Hinoto stares at me for a while longer before a wonderful smile spreads across her small, childish lips. "Can we go eat Belgian waffles at Le Pantry?" she asks as if her words should be hidden, words of blasphemy.

Here I am, the smaller one, holding onto my big sister like she was a child. Taking requests from her like I was a babysitter and she the toddler I look after. Just now I am beginning to understand how twisted the world we live in is.

"Yes! That's just by all the clothes shops!" I chirp as much as I can to keep the secrecy of our plot from mother's keen ears.

Hinoto almost leaps out of my lap, suddenly full of energy and life. "Then let's go nechan!"

We're off to the great big world outside our door. We're off to an adventure. A forbidden world awaits us outside our door, beckoning us to come and discover it.

* * *

We eat Belgian waffles at Le Pantry. We laugh and giggle and shrill over our milkshakes. The looks the other patrons are giving us only heighten our happiness and volume.

We fit on hundreds of items in tens of shops, coming out with so many bags that we joke about needing a chauffeurto help us.

We pretend to be upper class ladies with a real chauffeurtailing behind us as we stroll down the street giggling at how the imaginary man should hurry up to keep with our pace.

Then Hinoto turns to me with a diabolical glint in her reddening eyes and tells me that the chauffeur better be a good looking hunk with a cute ass. I recover my shock enough to giggle and add some of the things that I would like to see on my man into her list of wanted features.

We sit in a park to rest a little and snoop through what we bought, never stopping to giggle and joke.

The sun above us is sinking and the bright blue sky of early summer darkens and dies as the last rays of the sun turn the earlier light and careless white clouds into flaming red gashes in the sunny day's dying body.

Suddenly Hinoto's face turns serious and she looks at me like a real big sister should look at the smaller one.

"Kanoe-chan," she smiled sweetly at me, "how is school?"

I smile back because my heart bursts with happiness. Now I'm the battered and abandoned puppy crawling and begging for a caring and warm touch.

I have nothing to tell her but bad news. The new regime I built myself to improve my academic condition is taking small baby steps too small and insignificant towards full effect and improvement. Sometimes it frustrates me until I want to give up on it. But I'm trying, I'm doing my best to be patient and hardworking.

"I….I wasn't a very good student for a long time….I was full of anger so I destroyed a lot of the things mother and father worked hard to give me."

I ditched school so much and still mother was blind to it like Hinoto will be one day, so I kept rebelling. Kept shooting my own foot instead of shooting mother.

"But I am working very, very hard to correct those mistakes and slowly I will manage to patch my academic career back to a good condition."

Hinoto smiles lightly. "Academic career?" she laughed. "We are girls Kanoe-chan, we don't need careers, we'll soon have ourselves a husband and children to look after."

My mind freezes at the sound of those words.

The dragon who rampaged fire in my chest when I was angry at mother and father for neglecting me is back again.

Rebellion. I was always a very rebellious person. Rebellious and vengeful. I always thought of myself as a wild animal, never to be tamed.

After some moments of silence I decide to brush the subject away.

Hinoto smiles to herself as if the message was well taught to me. She must be very pleased that she finally did something to be a real bigger sister.

"It's getting dark," I say after folding back all our shopping and neatly rearranging them in their different bags, "we better head home."

"Kanoe-chan," she says suddenly, putting such a small and baby-ish hand on my grown one, "do you think mother will be angry?"

Like the streaks of dark blue besmirching the light blue of the early afternoon we headed out to, Mother looms over the joy we have.

"Maybe….but we're going home now so it's okay." I get off the bench with my share of the bags.

"Besides," I let the dragon beam through my eyes, "no matter how much she'll be angry with us, no matter how loud she'll scream at us or punish us, she will never be able to take this afternoon away from us. Never! It's ours forever, in here," I tap on my temple.

Hinoto is caught in my fire. She is ablaze with my excitement and rebellion.

We walk out of the park towards the train station with our heads high and light.

When we laugh at our jokes we laugh out loud. We spit our happiness in the face of the world around us, the world who sulks at us and wishes to sour our joy.

We won't let it because we are together now and we are strong. We are sisters; together we can take the whole world on.

* * *

The first crack in this illusion we wove ourselves into is in the subway wagon. Suddenly Hinoto stumbles as her left leg loses connection with her mind.

My sister is eaten by her future that blinds her and cripples her until she will be the perfect dreamgazer.

Years later I saw that clearly and it made sense. Back then I just panicked.

I caught her in my arms, her body so small and fragile after having stopped growing when the dreams came.

We giggle about it showing a stiff upper lip to the people around us. We are two sisters joking around; nothing bad is going on here, it was but a small, youthful slip.

But fear is leaking into my sister's laughter and as I pick it up I start feeling it too.

Hinoto crushed to the ground in the next wagon. There was nothing she could have stumbled on. Her legs simply gave way under her and she fell like a discarded doll, like a toppling building.

This time I couldn't manage to catch her so I rush to her side and help her back on her feet.

But her feet won't cooperate! They're limp and heavy. Every time I try to make her stand, she falls again.

She is silent as I try to help her. The life and happiness of the shopping spree smacked out of her when she fell for the first time.

I look behind my back and see that soon the wagon will be filled with people, so I take my rag doll of a sister and sit her on the benches before we'll have no room for ourselves.

I wrap my arm across my sister's small shoulders and try to tell a joke in her ear.

But my sister can't hear me. She is staring forward vacantly. Her eyes are open wide, staring at a man reading the paper opposite to her. Tears start to form in the big reddening orbs.

"Nechan…." Her voice is small and frightened, cracking as tears choke her.

I brush the hairs away from her face. She is sweating and the hairs cling to her skin.

Her skin is so bright and her hairs, once black as mine, are now brightening like her eyes….like her sickly pale skin infects them with whiteness and if I brush them away they'll stop it.

"What is it nesan?" I whisper kindly, mustn't start a drama act in the train wagon, mustn't stick out of the formal behavior or people will look at us funny. The nail that sticks out will be pounded down.

"Nechan…I can't see anything….I really can't now," she whimpers. She is shaking under my arm. The tears in her eyes fall freely now.

I wrap my other arm around her and rest her head on my shoulder to hide her emotions.

Barricaded by our shopping bags, I sit and shield my sister from the cruel world around us. I try to be strong for her as the night I see outside the wagon's window spreads all around us in my head.

But I am only fifteen and the wagon is full of strangers, some look dangerous to my exhausted-into-paranoia mind.

I am not yet strong enough to protect my sister completely and so the cruel world is raging around us, roaring and clawing at us.

Everything I saw as normal is now twisted and ugly. Everything bright and happy is now dark and evil.

People's eyes turn from a quick glance to long harsh stares.

The closed mouths of passengers who remain silent during the ride open up to me, snarling to expose big pointy teeth.

I shield my crying sister from this world of horrors and start crying myself, crying like the lost little girl that I really am under my cloak of the rebellious teen.

* * *

Hinoto still can't walk when we arrive at our station. We have a few more blocks to pass before our home. What will we do?

I am no longer petrified, I am only frightened. I must be brave and strong for my sister.

I take her on my back with our shopping bags in my hands and start heading home.

The buildings in the blocks we pass by are small, the way is really not that long but I am only a fifteen year old girl who isn't very good at gymnastics and never worked at physical labor in her life. As a child I preferred the tea party for dolls over the swing sets, slides and trees to climb, so I never really developed muscles.

Hinoto is heavy on my back. Our bags are heavy in my hands. The fatigue of my great fear in the train wagon slithers through my mind until I'm almost hallucinating how the road stretches on and on and on.

When we enter our home I cannot hear my mother's screams and my father's roars. I am relieved as they remove Hinoto off my back. I am grateful as they snatch the bags from my hands.

A silly smile spreads on my face as a fever I developed earlier in my stress makes me lightheaded.

Then the powerful slap snaps me back to reality. I am too shocked to avoid the second one. After the third I start wobbling on my feet.

I drown in my shock until I can't see the forth coming. The pain goes unregistered.

I can't hear Hinoto as she screams at the top of her lungs for my father to stop. I can't see her as she fights against her heavy limbs and throws herself on him, stopping him from dealing the fifth slap.

Now my vision is blurred because the slaps shook my hair out of it's neat ponytail. They spread before my eyes like a dark veil as I bow my head down.

My head is heavy with pain and adrenalin residue. It's buzzing and thudding as I swing it from one side to the other with each step I take.

I crush on my bed and fall asleep. I am sick and beaten.

In my sleep I call out for the dragon to save me, to pull me in his flight and take me away from here.

The dragon returns to sit on my chest. In my sickness' fever I see him clearly as if it was really here.

I smile at him and he tells me, "What will you do about today?"

"I will stop it from happening again."

"How?"

"I will…I will…" I let the fire he blows out of his nostrils inspire me, "I will destroy them. I will destroy this house. I will destroy the train we were in and the train station. I will destroy…." My fever drowns me in another whirlpool of ache and sleep.

When I wake up the dragon is still curled on my chest, awaiting my answer. He was waiting for me as I closed my eyes for a second that stretched out over three hours.

"I hate them you know, mother and father. And I….I….hate Hinoto for not helping me….but…."

I am burning.

When I wake up the next morning the fever has passed.

The world outside has taken no notice of what I've been through.

As I get out of my bed, walk down to make breakfast, brush my teeth and wear my school uniform I pull myself out of my ashes.

I am reborn from the ashes of the girl who burnt to death last night.

The dragon is no longer my childish imaginary friend that only I can see.

The dragon has scorched himself into my body, into my heart, into my mind. His snaky body flows in my blood, spreading its fire inside me.

I will destroy this world. I will save my sister. I will kill my parents. I will burn this house down. I will kill each and every man in a suit that comes to talk to my mother.

I am the new Kanoe, rising from her ashes brand new and complete, never to burn again.

I am strong.

I have a new cloak.

* * *

Years have passed since that day when Hinoto and I were truly sisters. The new knowledge poured into me changed the world as I saw it.

I still have the dragon, though I no longer think of him.

I am still strong, rebellious and vengeful.

I am still cloaking myself.

I have grown up and, as all grownups do, I shed many of my childhood and teenage dreams. I scattered my infantile promises to the wind like the ashes of a departed relative who wished to be one with nature in death.

I kept two of the things I promised to the dragon in me:

I will destroy this world.

I will save my sister.

I will not live for long.

Those who keep a dragon within them will one day burn in its flame.

I am not an Office Lady because I will never have a husband and children.

(End)


	2. Kusanagi

**Disclaimer: **I do not own X.

**Author's Thanks: **goes out first of all to my beta Lani Reaper, To Lady Multi, Sakura (who directed me to X Character Files for better understanding of what Clamp are trying to say to us), Tanuki-dono and Lani-chan from Clampasque board.

**Author's note: **this story is an attempt to draw some kind of a background story for parts of X's character's lives that Clamp did not light for us. It is not a statement but a mere opinion.

* * *

**Shiyuu Kusanagi: Nature's Sounds.**

A mechanized scythe roared angrily across the large lawn stretches at Shinzaka children's hospital. It's pair of rotating plastic wires mercilessly cutting through the freshly grown grass shoots, mutilating the plants to suit the hospital's patience and doctor's aesthetical wishes.

Up on the fifth floor, behind lock and key, strapped to his bed, thirteen year old Kusanagi could do nothing to block out the screams of pain from the grass. He couldn't even cover his ears because his already powerful arms were tied securely to the bed's frame.

This is how life's been for Kusanagi since the first plant spoke to him.

* * *

At the age of five, little Kusanagi and his parents took a stroll through Kusanagi's grandfather's large farm land (and the home for Kusanagi as well). His grandfather was one of the few farmers who still kept and grew rice fields all on their own with little help from his descendants, kind neighbors and friends.

They settled down for a small picnic on grandfather's backyard lawn, allowing Kusanagi to roam free as he wished.

Nothing pleased Kusanagi more then running around freely. He was always an energetic boy, happy to go playing rather then sitting to draw or learn how to read or even watch television.

Roaming free on grass, around a nature resort or in the park was better then just roaming around. Kusanagi loved feeling the soft grass under his bare feet, he loved climbing trees, swimming in ponds and crossing the nearby stream.

When he'd walk across the large forest by the village where he lived the animals would crawl out of their dens and observe him. He'd draw near them and observe them curiously, patting and cuddling them if any would come near enough for it.

His parents noted this mutual fascination between nature and their boy and they always admired and praised him for how well he's behaving himself around the animals.

They never wondered _why _this was happening. They were simple people, without much education and with little intellect to begin with. But they loved Kusanagi and they were content as long as their son was happy and didn't harm anything or anyone else.

Kusanagi was such a good boy, such a _big_ boy, always busing himself with learning how to work his grandfather's field like his father, always trying to help his mother around the kitchen before supper time.

The days before Kusanagi discovered his powers were happy and golden.

They ended when, as he roamed the grass happily, Kusanagi found an old tree stump.

In its better days the tree must have been quite big because what was left of it's trunk was wide and complicated, it's roots changing the landscape around it into little hills and holes between the wood.

But now it lost its glory; it was crippled beyond repair. Along the rims of the chopped part the bark was swollen, where water from the tree's roots were caught against the new mutilation and froze there over the long years since the tree's destruction.

Kusanagi stared at the stump, fixated. He never noticed it here before but now he had to, now that the tree _spoke_ to him.

"I can't grow" it said. Its voice was that of an old man, older even then Kusanagi's grandfather. It had a low moan, its voice hoarse from years of silence, suffering and old age. "Why can't I grow? Why can't I feed off the sun?"

Kusanagi's eyes filled with tears, his heart pounded pain in his little chest. The poor tree….it can't grow anymore. ….it's crippled…it's hurt.

He neared the tree and wrapped his small arms around it's rough dry bark "I'm sorry Mr. Tree….I'm so sorry for you" he burst into tears as he leaned his forehead against the stump.

"I….I can't grow…." The tree moaned on, baffled and confused in his misery.

Kusanagi cried, apologizing to the tree over and over again.

His parents found him in a state of childish hysteria, refusing to let go of the tree no matter what. He was screaming and kicking when his father picked him up and carried him away at last.

"No! Let me go father! The tree is crying! It can't grow anymore! Please let me go!"

At dinner time that day, after Kusanagi had a bath and an afternoon nap, his family sat to dinner with him and kindly asked him to explain what had happened to him.

Kusanagi told them.

They stared at him, puzzled.

"What? That old stump by the tool shed?" his grandfather asked finally, coughing the words out (he was an old man and his health wasn't all that good anymore) "I cut it down when I first bought this farm! But it was before the war, it was such a long time ago Kusanagi-kun, surely the tree died since then"

"No! it's not dead!" the boy screamed, pounding the table with his little fists, his eyes streaming with tears again "it's still alive and it's in pain grandfather! It wants to feel the sun again, it wants to grow but it can't…." He curled himself into a sobbing little ball "Grandfather, why did you cut it down? Why did you do such a thing grandfather… why?"

His mother wrapped her arms around him and his father ruffled his hair awkwardly but to no use.

Kusanagi never spoke to his grandfather again. Only on his deathbed, as the dying men called for his grandchild did Kusanagi come to say his farewell, but nothing more.

Why he held such blazing anger towards his grandfather, because of one tree which he spoke to once, Kusanagi didn't know. All he knew was that from then on he simply could not look at the old man with the same affection as before; everything changed.

* * *

Kusanagi's ability to hear nature speak to him was not always such a horrible torture as it started. Often it made the world around him into a magical kingdom, a happy place for a happy child to grow in.

In summertime the insects would come to his bedroom window and buzz about their search for mates, of the flowers and dung they fed on that day, of the wonderful sun heating them during the day, of the sunflowers with their heads held high.

In spring the sakura petals would rain down on him, singing a silly "Tiddle, tiddle, tiddle tiddle" as they descanted to the ground in small circular movements. Kusanagi loved spinning on his bare toes with the petals falling all around him.

The cherry trees would tell him about their upcoming sweet fruits and of their pride in how the humans regard their blossom and of a far off tree amongst them who lived in a city and ate human souls.

Kusanagi loved flowerbeds most of all. He loved to sit by a flower and listen to its idle chit chat, mostly incoherent drabble about silly things that made Kusanagi giggle loudly.

He liked bushes and their strange pride of how they're not quite simple plants and not quite trees but they're big and strong and surviving. He liked how they'd "psst" at him whenever he was playing hide and seek with his friends, offering him a sanctuary amidst their small branches.

Kusanagi loved climbing trees (constantly reminding himself not to scratch their barks or snap any of their twigs) and cuddle on a branch, listening to the tree's slow humming about the breeze through their leafs, the birds amongst their branches and the little rodents nesting in their bark's cavities.

Animals spoke to Kusanagi as well.

He loved sitting at a riverbed listening to the fish, snails and underwater insects make a whole cacophony of different tongues and conversation dimmed by the flowing water.

The fish spoke of nothing much, their miniature minds allowing only some creativity beyond everyday survival.

Cats fascinated Kusanagi with their cunning, scheming minds and their constant bipolar behavior between loyalty and love to humans and the same love towards themselves.

Dogs often gave Kusanagi a headache as they could spend hours on end talking about the things that excited them today and of how wonderful their owner is and about the latest scent trail they discovered; on and on they went.

Birds sang beautifully about the insects and worms they caught today and of how beautiful it was to hover in the sky with the sun on their wings.

From the birds Kusanagi developed a dream for his future: He wanted to be high in the sky, all alone in mid air between heaven and earth. He promised himself that one day he will be there and spread his arms sideways to feel the sun on them like the birds.

Kusanagi spent many school recesses at a far corner of the schoolyard, where a huge wisteria tree slowly plotted to take over the school fence completely.

At first, like any other child in his school Kusanagi was sure the long draping branches only hid the tree's trunk. But as soon as he walked past it the wisteria beckoned him over, inviting him into her embrace.

Inside was a small room surrounded by wild flowers and branches. This was heaven for Kusanagi and some of his happiest moments he spent there, embraced by nature.

He sat listening to the insects visiting the tree's breathtaking flower clusters, to the birds twitting amidst the branches and the silent fungi that lived on the tree's bark.

Of course hearing the sounds of nature bore a pain filled side as well.

Every winter Kusanagi would become a gloomy silent child, his head bowed with the heavy load of so many frozen plants under the snow, so many animals too weak to survive dying of cold and hunger.

No matter how much he sat under the trees asking them if they were cold and how could he help them, they never answered back. Nature only spoke to Kusanagi but it never answered his words to it.

Autumn was hell. All around him the animals would disappear, preparing for hibernate or slowly dying.

The rustling, brilliant bright green leaves he so adored lost their color, shriveled and died. When other kids would go and kick around in the piles of fallen leafs, Kusanagi would silently kneel at their side to mourn for them.

Eventually Kusanagi began realizing that all this pain was a part of the cycle of nature. He realized that what shriveled and died was soon replaced by a fresh new being which will die in time and be replaced all over again.

This understanding calmed Kusanagi and lessened his pain every year when the weather grew cold around him.

* * *

There was one pain Kusanagi was never able to block out; the pain humans inflicted upon nature.

When he hiked across the nearby hills around his grandfather's farm Kusanagi would often encounter a tanuki. These raccoon like creatures would sit and speak to him of their dwindling territories, of the mange human's pet animals spread around them, of the prowling cats and vicious dogs unleashed upon them, of the city suburbs spreading into their homes like cancerous tendrils.

Whenever a tree was cut down or trimmed to ease the life of the humans around it Kusanagi would suffer pounding headaches from the screams and whimpers in his ears.

Lawnmowers were his mortal enemies, exerting such agonized shrills from the grass they hurt. Kusanagi would make a long detour around his village's big park whenever the municipality unleashed gardeners upon the park.

His parents grew to be constantly weary of their son's mood swings.

They thought it must be because of school exams that their son constantly swung from happy and cheerful to sad and miserable.

He developed the bad habit of throwing tantrums whenever something cruel happened to nature around him earlier that day. He'd lock himself up in his room and sit there, pouting, breaking into tears about the misery he heard today.

He was a fast growing boy, expanding in width as well as height. Helping his father in the field turned him into quite a muscular young boy at the age of 12.

He used it to bully other kids. Well, bully is a rather ugly word to describe the Robin Hood type of boy he was.

He shooed kids away from abusing a puppy or kitty might he run into such a scene.

He'd tackled kids who maliciously danced on ant mounds to squash the poor insects.

He once terrorized a teenage couple who insisted upon carving their names on a tree's bark in the park, chasing them wherever they tried to leave their mark.

Kusanagi's parents heard about it from his teachers and acted as any other parent would do with a slightly violent yet still relatively good at school child. They'd ground him, scowl at him, lecture him and deprived him of television/sweets/a trip to the cinema if the felony was serious enough.

* * *

When Kusanagi was thirteen the village municipality, along with a panel of worried parents, decided to cut down the big wisteria tree Kusanagi so dearly loved.

They said its bark was covered with fungi that could proof poisonous to children roaming the schoolyard.

Kusanagi burst into a fit of anger.

As soon as he heard his beautiful wisteria's first panicking shrills he shot to his feet and tried to dash out of his classroom.

His home teacher would have none of it, blocking the door with her own body.

Kusanagi rampaged. He grabbed tables and chairs, hurling them powerfully at the windows to try and hit the lumberjacks hurting his tree and worked under his class's window. He punched and kicked any classmate who tired to stop or reason with him. He ignored his teacher's shouts to calm down and stop.

He was shouting, roaring like a wounded animal, foaming at the mouth. This big bulky boy, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets with anger, his forehead creased with pulsing swollen veins, his words maddened, was a terror to look at.

Usually he was such a silent and calm boy when he wasn't kicking other kids to behave themselves, his teacher was too shocked at this complete change in his behavior she simply stood and stared at him.

Other teachers soon came into Kusanagi's class, trying to grab hold of the child and calm him.

As soon as Kusanagi noted the opening door he shot out of the classroom, kicking and biting his way through whatever teacher coming against him and trying to stop him.

As he reached the ring of workmen attacking his beloved wisteria Kusanagi discovered yet another power within him.

As he stood trembling with anger before the pack of tree haters he felt energy gathering into him.

The energy came from the ground he stood on, the very earth that fed the trees and plants to which he was such a tentative listener and loving friend. It was a power given to him by what only he could know, understand and love. It was nature finally speaking back to him, finally answering all those questions he gave it. Nature was giving him this power in gratitude for recognizing and caring for it's creatures.

The energy streamed from his feet, through every fiber in his body, flowing into his fists as he clenched them.

"Leave her alone!" he roared at the working men who turned to see a maddened young boy screaming at them.

The men's manager put a kind smile on his face and neared Kusanagi "Little boy" he said with his fake sweet tone "this tree is not good for you so we're cutting it down"

"But….but…." Kusanagi tried to clear his vision from the anger blinding him "But I love that tree….she's a good friend of mine…"

The man ignored his words, filing them as silly kid's talk, though Kusanagi knew nothing of it.

"She has birds amongst her branches now, with three eggs in their nest….If you cut the tree down they'll die mister" Kusanagi started begging, telling nature's energy in his fists to wait a little bit.

"And….and there is a nest of ants under her; it needs her roots to keep their colony's walls firm…."

"And how would you know such a thing boy? Reading a lot of kid's nature books then?" the man's fake smile began fading as this chat began boring him and lunch break drew nearer.

"…No…" Kusanagi never encountered such scorn for what he said. It stung like acid.

The kids in his school feared his might and agreed to anything he said. His parents wished for a happy calm domestic environment and nodded at anything their son mumbled about.

But this man….. And the other work men….they looked at him like he was crazy….they didn't believe him….and worst of all…..

_They were going to cut her down!_

"**DON'T HURT HER!**" He roared at the top of his lungs, launching the gathered energy from his fists to the ground.

A huge slit opened in the earth, splitting the ground under the working men's feet, hurling some of them down the pit, throwing them off their feet, breaking their equipment and scaring away those who remained unharmed.

Kusanagi ran to his wisteria and hugged her bark, refusing to let go no matter what, crying and screaming at anyone who tried to reason with him.

They didn't reason with him much. After the work party was thoroughly evicted in ambulances and cars the only people Kusanagi encountered were policemen and strict angry teachers.

They forced him off his wisteria; they dragged him violently away, dodging his raging fists and calling his parents over immediately.

Kusanagi was in the hospital's psychological ward before he could gather his wits together again.

* * *

Japan is not a nation with the highest tolerance for mental problems. As a mere child the doctors treating Kusanagi tried to do all they could to keep him away from being sent to a real mental hospital.

For now he was strapped to his sickbed, constantly visited by his frightened and ashamed parents, looked down upon suspiciously by frightened nurses and agitated doctors.

They reasoned with him and tried calming him with words as best they could.

All he gave in return was constant demands to know of his wisteria's fate. No one around him had the courage to tell him the truth and start him into another violent tantrum.

Much like an imprisoned animal, Kusanagi soon learnt that if he will not behave himself he received a needle prick and was sent into chemical induced slumber or into a foggy zombie state where he couldn't formulate a single coherent thought.

He calmed down and learnt to control his anger, to shut his mouth about any more sounds from nature, to suppress any need to help what was calling him from the other side of his sickroom's well locked window.

Any doctor sent to interrogate him about his nature hearing ability received nothing from Kusanagi. He either refused to cooperate at all or denied what he said earlier, claiming it was all a dream he had once and tried to hold on to.

After a while they untied him, even allowed him to take a stroll around the hospital garden. He had to fight himself to stop trying to talk to plants and animals when other people were around him.

He was released back home a month later. He came back older, wiser and a lot sadder.

When he was still strapped to his bed in the hospital he came to a realization that saved his life from turning into long imprisonment in a mental hospital.

Those who have "powers" not those of normal humans have "pains" different from normal humans.

But, there is "happiness" that he'll feel _because_ he has those "powers".

* * *

After being hospitalized like that Kusanagi's life could never return to the easy going countryside way it was before.

He was sent to a boarding school mostly containing semi-criminal youths so he won't repeat his violent acts and to ease the burden off of his frightened parents, already at their wit's end with his behavior.

Despite the fact that he grew to be quite a big strapping guy Kusanagi kept his core of innocence and tenderness within him, despite constant offers to join this gang of youths or the other in the strict, prison like school.

After he graduated with medium to low scores (he wasn't very good at many subject, often a victim of day dreaming during class and the deafening sounds of nature interrupting his education) there weren't many places he could go to.

University was out of the question, he didn't even consider it.

Working in a store, in a horse farm, in an amusement park, even in a cemetery, all passing seasons in his life that flew by too quickly, starting out nice and hopeful only to end in bitter disappointment. Kusanagi would forget to do something and screw up something important for his boss. He'd be a little too rough on an important piece of equipment and break it…..so many mistakes Kusanagi felt like an elephant in a china store, constantly rampaging around unable to stop destroying things.

The defense force, or the brute squad as Kusanagi liked to call it, was just the place for him.

Filled with able bodied men and women with big warm hearts and little to none formal education, helping citizens with tasks for titans. They'd help dig up rocks where machines couldn't reach them, shoveled snow for snow festivals, helped in disaster areas, aided firefighters might a forest blaze erupt.

Amongst these men and women Kusanagi found his home and friends, all of them a bunch of kids trapped in giant's bodies. They were hardly as tough as they seemed and the only drawback they ever had was their random boozing outs.

Until the year 1999 Kusanagi found a place to work, socialize, get a date or two over the years and most importantly; always be at nature's earshot.

And his childhood dreams of hovering above the earth, letting the sun shine down upon his arms as if they were the wings of a bird?

If you'll look at the various framed pictures Kusanagi brought with him to his barrack wherever he was stationed you might stumble across a picture taken in his first parachuting drill.

You can see him under his round canopy of white silk, his eyes close serenely, a sweet smile on his lips and his arms stretched sideways like a child in an amusement park slide.

It is the picture in which Kusanagi looks the happiest, even if you can't really read it off him; believe that he's the happiest in his life there.

The happiest until he met Yuzuriha…

(end)


	3. Yutu

**Disclaimer: **I do not own X.

**Author's note: **this story is an attempt to draw some kind of a background story for parts of X's character's lives that Clamp did not light for us. It is not a statement but a mere opinion.

**Author's thanks: **to my beta Kitsunia, good luck with the finals!

* * *

**Kigai Yutu: A Dialog with an Answering Machine**

"Tomoe."

"I'm sorry. Work went longer than I thought, and I'm home late.

I heard your message on the answering machine. I'm calling you now because you told me to call you."

Probably to report their father's worsening condition. Never mind how worse Yutu's father's situation might get, walking into the man's hospital room will only make things worse.

So Yutu would walk into his apartment everyday, and turn immediately to his answering machine, an exile begging for news of his forbidden homeland.

Tomoe would always tell him to call her but he never meant it, she never answered his calls. 'Please call me back' was, he realized, a phrase of speech for her.

"But, to catch you not home... "

Of course she was home to hear this message; she's screening his calls using her damn caller I.D. She probably sent her little daughter away from the room if she was there, might the innocent hear anything of the family's black sheep.

"So, I'll leave a message in your machine. Your answering machine can record for a long time, right? It seems like I'll be able to talk a lot."

Yeah, that's right, he'll talk until the tape in her machine will run out and she'll have no other choice but to listen to him while he talks, waiting for him to stop. Then she'll have to switch the tape, or erase his words and then maybe…maybe then she'll start feeling remorse for what she's doing and what she's done; probably not.

"How are you? I'm still working seriously at the ward office.

"You doubt me. I really am taking my work seriously."

She won't believe him. No one in his family would believe him if they'll see him in his office work, in his decent and normal appearance, making a living like a normal sane civilian.

He talked some more, coming up with a story about a young father who couldn't make his mind up about a name for his daughter. In his story Yutu recommended Tomoe and told many great things about a girl he knew named Tomoe.

Of course it was a lie, half a lie actually. The original father wanted a name for a boy and thought 'Kamui' was a good name. Yutu only told him half the story about the Kamui he knew and managed to get the man to change his mind. At the time he didn't wonder how a simple civilian with no idea about the meanings of the name Kamui could have come up with it all by himself. He shrugged and went out to lunch.

"That reminds me. You called me at the Setagaya ward office the other day? I'm sorry, I think that was my paid-vacation day."

It wasn't her by the way; though Yutu didn't know that, it was some old fling he had who called in rage to ask him where he was.

Yutu's co-worker, who received the call, swung the little memo she made at Yutu the next morning as he arrived at the office. "A Tomoe-san called about you," she said with a dubious smile.

Yutu the Flirt, Yutu the Playboy, melted into a confused, stunned man. Suddenly Tachi, his co-worker, noticed that Yutu's beginning to show signs of his age. So far he must have kept them well tucked under his bright smiles.

"Tomoe-san? My sister called?"

Tachi's hand stopped waving the memo. Shooting her eyes to the memo, she scanned the short venomous message and wondered why his sister would leave a remark about his cute little ass.

Must be another Tomoe….

"Ah…uh…"

Yutu wore a small painful grin and shrugged. "I'll call her back, it's okay, I know what she called me about." He avoided eye contact with her.

He spent the rest of the work day cringed in his workstation, frowning slightly and looking very not-Yutu-ish.

He was sure Tomoe called him to give him word of his father's death. Why else would she call him at work?

As soon as he got home, Yutu called his sister. Who didn't answer of course. He called her mobile phone and got screened again.

Finally, after wringing his hands through his hair until he realized he was tearing it out with stress, completely crumbling down on the floor by his phone and answering machine, he called the hospital where his father was committed.

His father was fine. He even got out of bed his morning to take a stroll in the little garden. Yes, he's looking better. No, there hasn't been sign of metastasis developing.

No, I'm sorry, he will not receive your call. The nurse didn't actually have to say that, but her tone when she gave excuses and avoided answering his request got the message through all right.

Yutu thanked her and hung up the phone. His father was all right. Must have been the other Tomoe that called him in the office. He should have known that his sister would never bother to contact him in any manner other then leaving a short message on his answering machine.

* * *

Yutu was a difficult boy, getting dragged into…well, just about anything possible.

"Go with the flow" the message seeped into him when he first discovered his water controlling power. It helped him make some sense of his life so far.

If someone came up to Yutu and told him there was somewhere to go, he'd go there. If someone told Yutu to do something, he'd do it.

It made him into a wonderful student and a horrible brat at the same time. When he'd finish homework, he'd disappear through the back yard and off to find his friends hanging at some video arcade.

He drank alcohol when they drank alcohol…he smoked whatever they smoked. If they fell to the ground, too high or drunk to move, so would he.

Only he wasn't like them, his home wasn't a wreck, he had no learning difficulties or abusive parents or a childhood trauma that pushed him to such behaviors. He was there because he went along with their flow. He had money and he had charm and his 'buddies' squeezed the two out of him as much as they could for their own benefit. It got him into a lot of trouble.

Yutu was born in an American military base in Okinawa and had spent some of his early childhood there. By the time that he was five his father had retired and they've left the base to a wealthy neighborhood in the Tokyo suburbs.

Tomoe was born just a little after they've moved. Yutu adored her with all his heart. When the neighbor's mad pit-bull managed to climb the fence between the two house's yards and charged the toddler Tomoe, Yutu sent their little traditional Japanese pond's water to beat the beast away. That's when he discovered his power. Tomoe held a special place in his heart ever since.

But let's get back to Yutu's early teenage years.

Yutu's father was a warrant officer back in his days, the base's quartermaster commander. When he retired his found no solace in any retirement hobby and soon became a caged lion, taking out his outbursts on his family and home.

The 'go with the flow' Yutu couldn't have been born into a stricter family.

Often Yutu wondered if, when he stumbled back home crashing and breaking his way into his bed, did he upset his father's want to have a properly raised son or was it his father's extreme (almost obsessive compulsive at times) sense of order he insulted.

The routine on mornings when a trail of destruction led to Yutu lying in his rumpled bed reeking of alcohol and a strange smelling smoke went like this: a good slap or two, a violent shove into the shower, a quick breakfast (which Yutu would spew out almost immediately due to hangover and other chemical's residue) and off to school.

The number of times Yutu fainted in class or on his way to school grew increasingly as his friends began discovering new adventures to have, dragging Yutu around with them.

Yutu's mother was a small woman. That's the best way to describe her; small body, small hands, small feet, small frightened/awed eyes, small mind, small voice, small amount of control over her children.

She was knocked up by her future husband and forced to marry the big, hairy, foreign man out of fear of insult to her and her family's name. Her parents hated her for going out with an American soldier in the first place and soon after her wedding stopped talking to her. They were both survivors of the Big Boy and their grudge for anything American they failed to convey to their daughter due to her little intellect and great innocence.

Tomoe was the family's more stable member and as one, she soon realized she's there to help hold this family together.

Her father was far too big for her, far too violent and strict to do anything but be a good girl and appease his constant rage.

Her brother was like water running through her fingers, unstoppable, unaffected. Her frustration at her failure at helping Yutu out might have been melted into the deep anger she feels for him now.

Tomoe helped her mother about with daily chores and translating her father's thoughtlessly free flowing English into a sane-sounding conversation. And as soon as she realized her older brother was not helping at all with this disruptive family she grew an attitude towards her brother as if she was the bigger sister and he the smaller, constantly blundering brother.

Her age of reign over him didn't last; Yutu did not stay around his home for long.

He stumbled back home full of bruises, with two ribs broken and a couple of more fractured, his shirt covered with spilled blood, alcohol and sewage, his nose quite disassembled, his left eye too swollen to be opened and his ears ringing ominously.

He had gotten drunk with his buddies. They told him it'd be fun to pick a fight with the motorcycle gang who were just fueling in the gas station across the arcade.

Just before he blacked out Yutu could hear his 'friend' leave, chased away by angry motorcycles roaring them away. He was the only one beaten, he realized now, because he was not fully backed up. It wasn't the first fight he got into and he knew that in their little gang they always backed each other up. Guess he was never really a part of the gang in the first place.

He tilted his painful head sideways and noticed he was laying by an open sewage flow (these neglected parts of the city had those) and that the water in the sewage was _talking_ to him.

He smiled at them and tried to mumble through swollen wounded lips that this was because of the grass he's been smoking.

The water offered him help once again.

Yutu shrugged and spent the next few minutes twitching with pain, fighting back the tears of bitter betrayal and hopelessness.

The water surrounded him, taking him into their filthy deeps. He united with them, letting his body go and turn into water and be carried away back home.

When he materialized again, he was by his home, clawing his way out of the sewage with swollen bleeding fingers. His head hurt and his sides hurt and his eyes hurt from choked-back tears. He was only fifteen; he was not supposed to be here like this.

* * *

Tomoe discovered him first, following the foul smell of sewage to his room. She burst into tears of rage at his sight.

She screamed at him that he's ruining everything she's working so hard on. She kicked him and punched his sprawled legs with little girl's fists.

He tried to cry but his left eye's threat of searing even more was too much for him to bear.

His father burst into the room next, roaring and screaming, "What's he done now? What's he done now that little son of a bitch?" in that heavy American English of his.

Yutu's father wanted to hit his son but at the sight of the young beaten body on the bed, those thoughts were erased.

They loved him, they really did, they were his parents and both of them loved their son in their own individual way. So much shame, anger and hopelessness ground their love down to a faint whiff of an emotion.

Their love for him…Yutu was the reason they were stuck with each other, their initial love for him was only limited.

As soon as Yutu woke up in the hospital bed, after a stomach pump, a long hospitalization period he spent sleeping off the pain and shame, his parents were informed and arrived at his room.

His left eye was not so swollen anymore and he could lay both eyes on them as they chose to stand further from his bed, within a safe emotionless distance.

His father spoke, telling him that from now on it's just him in this world; they cannot take responsibility over him anymore.

His mother placed a bag by his bed; filled with some of his best clothes (those who weren't ruined beyond repair by his mid-night adventures) and with his schoolbooks and utilities.

His father told him to contact them again if he ever makes himself into a respectable man again. The choice of the word 'if' to describe the time of Yutu's future recovery hurt more then anything.

They turned around and left. Yutu was alone.

He cried a lot.

* * *

Yutu lived in a park a few blocks away from his high school for a while. Hiding his bag of school belongings and clothes in the bushes, Yutu slept in the artificial lake. No one would say anything to the teenager, who chose to do his homework on the park's lawn, would they? And no one could see him as he melted into water and flowed into the lake.

Yutu found a job at a huge dry cleaning shop where the customers were too rich and too impatient to check and see if any of their items were missing. Yutu chose to steal the ones of lesser importance anyway, the ones he knew they wouldn't miss. And so his off school appearance would consist mostly of suburb's yuppie out of fashion items.

Yutu became a skilled pickpocket of the clothes cast into his care, looking for a forgotten coin or paper money. These would make his breakfast, lunch and dinner money. Tips would also be useful for these purposes. Yutu discovered he had a knack for flirting with women when his stomach churned for food.

He stored his salary away to pay for his future collage payments.

His boss was very satisfied with Yutu due to the young man's unrelenting loyalty and obedience, his ability to fix plugged tubes in the various machines and his keen eye for a doubtful female costumer to chit-chat and flirt into staying in the shop's members list.

He allowed the boy to wash and iron his school uniforms in the shop, wondering how come such a good boy couldn't do it in his own home.

The nights in the park were the most difficult part of Yutu's early exile. Winter was coming and the lake's water was freezing. The darkness all around, the lack of a bed to curl up on, a duvet to hide under, a pillow to cry into, was the worst of it.

But Yutu clawed his way out of those days with hard work and survival instincts of a sewage rat. He was promoted in the quickly expanding laundry shop and soon saved enough money to rent a tiny hole of an apartment to live in, away from the freezing park.

The tiny space serving as his home was little comfort to Yutu. When he woke up he did not hear his father roaring for his children to wake up or they'd be late for school. When he returned home he did not see his mother hanging the laundry on the rake out back. His sister's bare feet did not tap lightly on the wooden floor outside his room's door when he was doing his homework.

At night he'd lie on the tatami (he did not yet save enough money to buy a proper futon) and let the notion of exile seep in fully. He knew what it meant in the beginning only he wasn't quite sure as to how to treat it. He soon learned how to wrap his heart with an iron shell and tell himself that it doesn't matter, that he doesn't need them anyway.

* * *

Yutu founded his collage studies by working in the launderette whenever he could, which wasn't a lot and soon his apartment's rent proved too much for his bank account. He was allowed to sleep in the shop on working days.

When Yutu couldn't work he'd find a lovely looking lonely woman and flirt her into buying his lunch or dinner. Then they'd go to her apartment for one night of a roof above his head.

Sometimes he'd have long term relationships lasting a few months before breaking up finally when the enchanted woman realized Yutu felt nothing for her but the need for her money.

Gladly, his collage's town was big and Yutu was clever enough to pick these women up from parts of the city as far away from each other as possible so one girl could not warn the others.

His collage years; Yutu preferred not to remember. They were just as dark as his living in the park days and they were equally lonely. Instead of his complete feeling of being lost he now felt the heavy moral burden of using these girls and the things he was doing with his body that he did not want nor enjoyed half as much as he showed.

* * *

The ward office was like a rope dangled at him in the deep filthy pit where he lay so far. As he clung to it with all his might it pulled him up to a cleaner, better life.

He saved enough money to rent a decent apartment of his own in Tokyo, where he had furnishing and a normally functioning kitchen and a wonderful view of a city which, by now he fully realized from the water's talk, one day he would help destroy.

His co-workers were all women that helped Yutu, still with his clawing surviving skills, to stick around through the first hard months of work when you're not quite familiar with your surrounding and what it is exactly that you need to do.

He flirted with his co-workers so much they couldn't help giving him high reviews when their employer ran little polls to help screening unneeded work force.

He gave whatever services his employer demanded of him in the man's office, late after-work hours whenever the time for cutting on manpower came.

Only when he took a look at his bank account's figures did the idea that he did not have to skip lunches and dinners anymore seep through, that he had enough money to stop living like a hell bound sewage rat. He could live a normal life now; he could become a decent man.

He would call his family and talk to his father.

With shaking hands he clutched the phone receiver, his heart beating wildly with every dial tone. His head swam and his eyes were tearing but he clung to the receiver, dialing over and over again when he reached the answering machine, clinging like he clung to his life so far.

His mother answered the phone eventually, excusing herself for not answering earlier; she was outside hanging the laundry.

For a moment the soft tone of his mother's voice, which he didn't hear for almost ten years now, gave him the illusion that he was recognized and welcomed back into the family. His head felt light and dizzy.

But as soon as he said whom it was, his mother shriveled back, muttering and mumbling that she shouldn't be talking to him and that she doesn't _want_ to talk to him and that Tomoe will deal with this and hung up the phone.

Yutu still held the phone's receiver, blinking into his tears. His mother did not _want_ to talk to him.

The receiver dropped to the floor.

For the first time since his last booze out some ten years ago, Yutu drank himself silly. When the bottle toppled over and splashed all over his floor Yutu melted into water and mingled with the highly alcoholic drink, completely soaking in every drop on intoxication.

He woke up three days later in a pool of fluids he did not want to think about and had come from within him. He cleaned them up with a blank mind and a cold heart.

Then he noticed the answering machine. It had a message in it. Yutu beat the 'play' button so hard he almost broke it.

"Yutu-san, this is your sister Tomoe speaking, call me back on this number…"

Her voice had changed! How mature she sounds now! Yutu smiled uncontrollably, folding his arms around his legs as he sat before the machine like a little boy again.

He dialed immediately and she answered him with the same frozen tone.

Was it the sound of playing children in the background? She had children! He was an uncle!

"Mother called me and told me you've called home. It's about time. Father is ill. He has lung cancer; he's going through chemotherapy these days."

All the words choking Yutu, demanding to burst out, suddenly disappeared, sucked out by shock.

"I…is he alright? Where is he hospitalized, when can I visit him?"

"Don't visit him." Tomoe's voice was as hard as the steel shell Yutu built around his heart in exile. "He doesn't want to see you. He's angry at you for almost giving mother a heart attack."

"But…but he told me to call when I'm a decent man…" Yutu kicked himself mentally for sounding like a hurt little boy.

"_He doesn't want to see you_, end of discussion!" He could hear by her tone that she was about to hang up.

"Wait! What about you Tomoe-cahn, how are you?"

"It's too late for that, goodbye Yutu-san…"

"No, **_wait!_**" Too late, she hung up.

He drank himself silly again.

The following days he spent breaking down, getting drunk a lot, squirming out of bar fights with sheer luck and whatever charm he managed to hoist out of his drunken state.

He slept around; men, women, it didn't matter. He wanted to catch some terrible illness to make him die faster. Maybe, he thought with a morbid smirk, he'll be hospitalized in the same room as his father.

The thought of his poor tiny mother stranded by the hospital bed, lost amongst all these men and women who were immensely smarter then her, in constant need to watch over the huge man she never loved once in her life.

The thought of his father, so able bodied and healthy, caught in his Achilles heel of enjoying cigarettes and knocked into cancer by it. His great wonderful blond mane withering under chemotherapy as his large body slowly rotted away, eaten by cancer.

Yutu thought about it so much he wanted to die just to stop these thoughts from coming.

And he couldn't come over and help them; he was exiled. He didn't want to proof them that he's a decent man anymore; he just wanted to see them; that was all.

And they hated him, would hate to see him there. The flow of Yutu's life hit murky water.

* * *

He wallowed in murky water until the day he was invited up to the office of Tokyo's mayor's secretary.

Kanoe meant not only a pseudo-stable relationship, but also a dam to stop his reckless flood from going any further down the waterfall.

She reminded him that 1999 was next year and that he may die then so what's the point of wasting his life so early?

The sex wasn't that bad though it left a somewhat acrid taste in his mouth, making him want to have a very long shower after each time.

He stopped drinking anything that wasn't tea. He carved the teatime ceremony into his daily routine. He found something to obsess about the meaning of in Satsuki's strange being and stopped thinking depressing thoughts of his father.

He started dressing better, eating better, making sure he got enough sleep everyday. He quit smoking completely.

He bought the ninja whip and practiced it three hours before sleep, after jogging around the park near his home and after two hours in the gym every free morning he had.

The only little leisure time he afforded himself was a trip to the arcade where he'd reminisce and play the odd video game, trying to figure out the new technology and games that developed since his boyhood days.

Tomoe called every month or so to give snippy, bitter little news of his father and never returned his calls when he wanted to talk to her a little.

Now that the fatal 1999 was nearing, Yutu found that he was emptying his life of anything that wasn't being a harbinger, including his family.

Whenever he called his sister he'd leave a long message on her answering machine with his latest tales. He knew she'll erase it and didn't care anymore.

Maybe if the world was destroyed and some other human-like creature would evolve one day it'd find Tomoe's answering machine and, with an archeologist's curiosity, bring back his recorded voice to be heard once again. Maybe.

Yutu always finished his calls to his sister with a bit of sappy thanks or a word about his status amongst them. Why he did it he didn't know but he couldn't stop himself from doing it either.

"Tomoe. Do you want me to take you to Shinjuku sometime?"

'Is he high on something?' she'd probably wonder, Yutu didn't mind anymore.

"You know, Tomoe. It's nice to live wishing for something, thinking, 'Let's do this, I want to do that' -- but it's not bad to live 'for the time being' and 'going with the flow' either. What you are, how you were born. Sometimes you understand when you live naturally."

What would she make of that? He didn't know. Maybe she'll sit before the machine in silence, pondering. He hoped she'd realize the flimsy, halfhearted explanation of his teenage behavior in those words. And maybe she won't even listen to this.

"I'm happy that you worry about me, someone that isn't as steady as others. But you have to take care of yourself sometimes, too."

'Hah! Why would I worry about you? You're tripping!' he hoped she wouldn't say. He hoped she'd listen to the first half of that, his description of himself.

"Oh, I think this machine is going to cut me off soon. I'll call again."

And she won't answer again.

"Don't catch a cold."

'Tripping!'

"My dear young sister Tomoe."

'When were you ever the older brother Yutu?'

"This was your only brother, Yutu."

Outside his window a dark red dragon-shaped lighting bolt exploded above Sunshine 60. The presence of his 'Kamui' working his powers tickled under Yutu's ribs.

He stared outside and took a deep breath, exhaling it with a sigh. This year his flow will lead to his death, as he wanted it to be. A man without a past cannot have a future.

His work was no obligation strong enough to make him want to heal the deep wound in his heart.

No partner he could ever have would mean anything that deep for him ever since the days when he used his body to pay for a roof above his head until sex was disgusting to him.

Satsuki was…well…different, but she will never come to love him and when she will, her Beast will kill her for it, or kill him which will be much preferred.

Maybe a Dragon of Heaven will kill him and end his flow of life.

Living naturally was not made for humans who build homes and a family around themselves to stabilize their life. If Yutu were a fish or a bird or an animal of the forest maybe he'd flourish in a life that flows but as a human, he was done for from the beginning.

At least it will be over within this year.

Every river flows on to the sea where it mingles with the water of other rivers gone lost, mingling it's unique water with everybody else's until it's no longer a river.

(end)


	4. Arashi

**Disclaimer: **I do not own X.

**Author's note: _this story is an attempt to draw some kind of a background story for parts of X's character's lives that Clamp did not light for us. It is not a statement but a mere opinion._**

**Author's thanks: **To my beta Kitsunia To Amy (thank you –blush- such a praising, thank you so much. I have a few more stories to tell so I don't know if I'll finish it so soon dear) and to Morbid Romantic for favoring this fic.

**Author's Notes:** I'm glad someone recovered the infamous Seishiro chapter and began reviewing it. I'm doing my best to not over-invent and not shock people with too much at a time.

* * *

**Kishuu Arashi – Never Let Them See You Cry**

She never let people see her cry, never!

When someone cries tears of anger, or pain, or sadness, even laughter, they take off their shield and let the world around them see a glimpse of the real them; the core them.

Arashi never let anyone see her cry because she didn't want people to look so deeply into her out of the fear that maybe, as they gaze into the breach in her defences they might discover something about her that she did not know.

And then what?

Will they use it to their advantage? Will they use it to her advantage? Will they shrug and walk away carelessly only to remember her in tiny glimpses whenever something similar to her comes before them? Will they linger and try to help? Linger and try to hurt?

Arashi didn't know and it's that lack of knowledge that drove her into fear and hiding; whenever she cries she hides and makes sure no one saw her do it.

She gets rid of evidence, as if she were a spy on the verge of getting caught, as if she's committed a terrible crime and now plots for her eligibility. She sprinkles cold water on her face to sooth the reddened cheeks, she washes her eyes with cold water or black tea to sooth the redness, she blows her nose then treats its skin with moisture creams and cold water to sooth its redness. Then she walks back into the real world with her mask replaced and fixed, prepared for whatever cruelness it'll hurl at her next.

Kishuu Arashi never lets people see her cry.

* * *

One can find many 'strays' in the big city:

Stray cats for one; leaping from trash bin to trash bin, strolling streets dirty and mucky as if they are kings of their region, meowing, fighting, purring, mating, guarding their territory and taking their naps in the most unusual places with such grace and carelessness.

Stray dogs… a lot less regal and a lot less sure of themselves, they roam the streets looking for others of their kind to join into a pack where they'll scavenge together and bark together and brawl together and grovel to the humans together. The lone wolf strays with their aloof manner and cold eyes, eyes brightening only when it's time to grovel for some food.

Stray teens…children of crime, neglect and abuse, roaming the streets much like the stray dogs. They do not bite; they stab you with a switchblade knife if you fail to give them your lunch money. They stab each other when bonds and alliances are broken. They do not bark; they curse and spit and hiss at you and other pedestrians and each other a lot. They break bottles and windows and glasses, get drunk, get high, get injured until they almost die. They either perish or manage to crawl out of the gutter eventually.

The three groups of the above, strays through and through, to whom will this little girl belong?

Roaming the streets aimlessly, without a parent to hold her hand and help her across the street and without the ability to read maps yet, little Arashi had become trapped on a block surrounded by wide roads and high buildings. This was her territory and she roamed it endlessly; perhaps she's a stray cat.

Three days into her abandonment in the streets, she learnt how to sneak into the bakery through the backdoor and steal a few buns to feed herself on; perhaps she's a stray teen.

She learnt how to look up into the eyes of the pedestrians with her big dark purple orbs and capture their hearts enough to earn a hot meal and a hug; perhaps she's a stray dog.

She learnt to dig herself a den amongst the cardboard packages and Styrofoam cubes where she'll be comfortable and cosy enough to sleep through the night; perhaps she is a stray cat after all.

Two weeks into her abandonment and she had already forgotten how her mother looks like and what their last words to each other were. She forgot the sight of her home, of her bed, of a freshly prepared meal on her home's kitchen table. She had become the child of the streets.

But the streets are no place for a child. Stray teens pull their trick of survival only barely and that is after they've grown into the cruel environment in the first place. Animals have their instincts and even with those they often fail. What chances will a little girl have in the streets!

Soon the eyes of pedestrians became cold and careless, realising she had become constant in her block, they ignored her and moved on with their life choosing to see the pretty cherry blossom in the park across the block rather then the dirty thin child at their feet.

Looking up made Arashi see people pass her by, looking down at her then onwards with the same monotonous grave expression. It's as if she lay in a coffin and they passed across it to gaze upon her and move on.

A shock went through her; was she dead and invisible? Was she a spirit now and nothing more? Perhaps it's better this way; ghosts can't feel the cold of the night and the hunger of days without a proper meal.

She didn't care if she'd die because her trouble would be stopped then and she won't have to bother with anything anymore.

So why did she feel the stinging in her eyes? Why did her heart choose to start thumping powerfully in her tiny chest and hurt so much?

She knew what she is about to do; she's done it so many times as a child and a baby that she's grown to know it's warning symptoms.

And she'll be damned if she'll let these cold hearted drones around her see her at it, she'd rather die already then to grovel with tears in her eyes.

She bit her tiny lower lip and walked towards a back ally where she slept a few nights ago. There she stood with her thin back to the cold wall and cried undisturbed. She choked her sobs and whimpers. Mice cry louder then that, but cats catch mice, do they not? She curled up on the floor inside a cardboard box and cried some more until her heart was clear and her head was dizzy and sleepy.

The rain then came down on her and nearly led to her death from cold, malnutrition and exhaustion. The cold melted when a stray dog found her and curled up at her side.

But the cold never really melted from her heart; she became frozen and careless. Her eyes always half dreamily staring, her voice always even and calm never mind what it spoke, her expressions hardly changing.

A month after that Kaede-san had found her.

* * *

Girls have a tendency to turn into three types at the age of eleven:

The queen, who rules her underlings with an iron fist and a mouthful of gossip and swears. The underling, who grovels and gossip along with their queen, partners in crime. And finally, the outcast who either cares not about the other two groups or suffers the insults on which queens build their palaces.

Arashi was the third kind. She was always a loner who's perfectionist ways made her avoid the company of anyone other then her in order to get things through correctly.

Her classmates' nonsense interests were empty and pointless to her; they bored her. She ignored their presence when it was forced on her and ran away from it whenever she could. She had better things to do.

She had her sword to practice; her time of peace and perfection. All alone in the dojo, with the white and wood walls so far from her, the smooth floor under her socked feet, the silence of the hall around her and the faint sounds of nature seeping in through the walls.

Here Arashi was happy, undisturbed and focused. Here she practiced her skills and perfected herself, chiselled through the rock to sculpture a figure of herself as she wanted to be.

Maybe if she'll work hard enough and put obstacles high enough in her path she'll find the real herself in the moments of despair and exhaustion. If not then she'll always have the skills and abilities such practices gave her.

Kishuu Arashi still did not meet the real her.

She was walking to her dojo when two groups led by two different class queens ensnared her. They stood at the entrance to the dojo and stared down at her from the small wooden terrace where Arashi would have her tea in her training breaks.

Arashi could not overlook this violation of her sacred ground. Her terrace was violated, defiled.

She clutched her neat pack of training clothes and levelled her eyes with the more powerful class queen.

"What are you doing there everyday Kishuu," the queen shrilled, talking to her underlings and comrade in status more then to Arashi.

"I train there."

"Train! What for! Girls aren't supposed to be so strong," the queen said. She was the cute and effeminate kind, the type that already attracts the attention of boy even though her body stays childish for now. The type that would grow to be a 'cute' popular girl and be courted by the millions: only to marry a 9-5 corporate and have an empty, boring, and meaningless life.

"It's so un-cute for a girl."

"I train in Kendo and I like it."

"Kendo," the second queen chirped, "you're hardly in the height to hold a shinai (1)properly, how will you train!"

Arashi's answer drowned in the sea of catcalls and laughter. She hung her head.

"'Rashi-chaaaan," the first queen now hissed. "You can't come here anymore! This is _our_ playground now and you're not invited because you're not our friend!"

"Yeah, you're not popular," the second queen jeered.

"The dojo is everybody's property, it belongs to everyone and everyone can train in it!" A hint of anger and complaint snuck into Arashi's voice.

The group on the terrace burst into laughter.

"Well guess what? It's ours now and you can't come in," one of the underlings yelled, cheers joining her voice immediately.

Arashi dug her little feet into the ground, clutched her fists, hardened her eyes, froze her expression and took a deep breath. Step by step she began walking towards the dojo, towards the lions, hyenas and vultures awaiting her on the terrace.

She climbed the few stairs and came face to face with the first queen who shouldered her way to the end of the flight.

The two girls stared each other down; one with calm and (inwardly wavering) power, the other with malice and an impatient need to see her opponent going down in tears of hysteria and fear of her might.

"Let me in the dojo."

"No."

Arashi took another step forward and here she was, no longer on a lower stair but on the same floor as the queens and their escorts.

"Let me in the dojo."

"I said no!" The queen lashed out her slim hands and pushed the little girl before her a few steps back.

Arashi lost the wooden ground under her feet and tumbled down a step. She fell backwards, nothing but her sharp instincts and powerful body to stop a nearly fatal fall like that.

She clung to the railing with one arm and swung there for a moment, balancing herself again two stairs down from the terrace.

She gazed at the smirking queen again, her eyes now big and sad.

"Go away, the dojo is ours to use," the second queen declared, triumphant.

Arashi complied. There was a dojo in her shrine, where the queens and underlings were too unholy to enter, where the atmosphere was too heavy for their light-headed interests and where Kaede's goodness proved to be too strict for them.

Arashi began training there since then. But not before she walked solemnly to her room in the shrine and crumbled into tears of despair and sadness like only an outcast with the fresh wounds of humiliation can.

She did not let the hyena pack see her cry.

Her disliking of human company grew; the cold in her heart spread, the aloofness became great.

She chose to be as far away from her age group's as she could, adopting a silent mature behaviour to herself, speaking and writing in an archaic language.

In his time it was not Sorata's fault Arashi had such a great hidden fear (well masked as patronizing and mature behaviour) of him; he was happy, cheerful and immediately popular, just like the queens and their underlings.

But he managed to break the ice finally.

* * *

The first time Kaede-san told Arashi of her role in destiny Arashi cried.

She was frightened.

She was only fourteen and along with the first signs of womanhood her sword came to be. She became the hidden priestess, embodiment of Ise Shrine's power; she had a role in her life and a path to follow.

And she was frightened to the core. She wanted to be back on the streets grovelling and hiding in cardboard boxes. The stray animals did not expect her to save humanity. The criminal teens were not an opposite company of powerful seven people whose aim in life is to destroy Tokyo.

She spent many night well tucked into her blanket, curled up on the futon, crying in panic.

But she came to except it. A twinkle in her heart helped her through, a twinkle she'll never admit to have had.

"_From now on there will be many people for you to meet Arashi. Some will be your friends. And some will be your foes. And some…some will come to love you very, very much…_"

* * *

"_What is going to happen in the future. And, what will happen to Tokyo, no, the Earth, now._

"_I plan to see what happens with my own eyes, like how I promised_

_you._

"_And, in those events, what I will choose and how I will act._

_I intend on studying myself._"

Three days into her familiarity with Kamui and Sorata. Three days into the core of 1999. She didn't feel comfortable around the other Seals though she pushed herself to be with them and talk to them. The only Seal she liked was Subaru who seemed to share the same poor socializing skills as her.

Inevitable she became intertwined with the group.

Arashi cried for the tragedy of Kotori, for the sadness of what had happened to Kamui, for the death of Saiki, which she knew before anyone else, did and had somehow managed to bond with on a brother-sister level.

But she did all those behind closed doors, in her room at Clamp Campus' dorms and she made sure twice and thrice that no one might hear her or come to 'her aid'.

She cried in panic once when she realized the Sakurazukamori is amongst her foes (Kaede was a good friend of Lady Sumeragi and, as a child, Arashi heard many spooky stories of the assassin clan). Those tears were the type she was most ashamed of and refused to acknowledge for what they are.

She cried after the first battle she took place in, tears of exhaustion, stress relieving and cleansing. She did not share them nor acknowledged them and whenever her heart beat a little more powerfully at the memory of that first taste of fire she hurried to quench them with her icy calm.

She resided in being the calm one, the collected and logical amongst the young DoHs. She showed nothing of her emotions but irritation from Sorata and mild excitement at battle. Other then that she was an ice sculpture never to melt.

* * *

Sorata had managed to work his way through her system, to squirm across and under her defences, to reach out and stroke the very deep core of her personality. How had he done it? She did not know but….

She was hopeful, really, that he would linger there to keep at it. She wanted to study herself and finally find the true her. If he could see it, maybe he'll show it to her.

Besides, he was _very_ stubborn.

Now he was on the bed, injured, crippled, because of her…all because of her…

Sure, he smiled at her, he laughed and joked, offered her food and was generally, well, Sorata.

But his horrid condition, it was all her fault; his avatar, his injuries, her own careless, selfish fault!

The tears, those damn tears, they came and they didn't stop, couldn't stop. Here she was, crying, and someone saw her.

Sorata reached out to place his palm on the side of her face, reached out and embraced her. He reached out through the breach in her defences and embraced her hearts, her true self, Kishuu Arashi.

"But I…I never let anyone see me cry! And now that the tears have begun, I can't seem to make them stop…"

His arms so warm, his chest so broad and powerful, his lips on her hair…intoxication. She was a teenager still, after all.

"A first? And just for me, huh? Her virgin tears…!"

That bastard! Will he never be able to say the right thing god damn it!

"Why do you always have to twist things around!" She pushed the bliss of his warmth away, infuriated.

She hated to be seen blushing for the same reason she hated to be seen crying. And here she was doing those two things in front of that…that…man…

"So…do you think I might have one more of your firsts?"

He pulled her into the kiss and into the embrace afterwards, into the bed and under him.

She did not struggle, for a very long time into it she was too shocked and numb with first time fear and bordering with terror surprise.

She understood what he was doing and agreed to it because she loved him. Because he was hers and she was his. Because it made sense and she wanted it. Because…because he gave her so much, and she gave him so little, really.

And she wanted it because he was Sorata, a man, her man, and her love.

* * *

"_You are the one for whom I'll give my life._"

"_Who asked you to pick me to be the girl you'd die for? What would happen to me…to my feelings for you if…._"

Saying something like "I'll die for you" is not a romantic thing; it's a hateful thing. To curse someone with eternal powerful love about to be snatched away by something so complete and undisputed such as death is the worst of the worst.

He had loved her, true, but he had made the wrong choice by it because….

Because he loved her so much that she drowned in it and became so accustomed to it that when he died she found herself on dry land; gasping for air, painfully exhausted, lost, frightened, dying.

Because she was far too ignorant in the ways of love: of powerful emotions and of how to deal with them to know how to deal with the end of their source.

Because she was to blame for his death no matter how you look at it.

And she looked at it, many times, oh so many times.

She wished to end her life as well and join him in eternal life. Maybe, in one of her future incarnations she will meet him and they won't have to die for each other, will not suffer from fate's fickle fingers.

Maybe they'll be two lazy stray cats heating from the sun on the lid of a trash bin, living peacefully and happily. She could guide Sorata through life on the streets, she could save his life for once, and she could repay him for all the things she did not have time to thank for.

She cried a lot, away from the women in her shrine. She cried so much she hardly left her room.

She cried more because her hormones raged and she did not know it.

The reason for those tears, when I was made known to her, made her stop thinking about stray cats.

Sorata had given her another gift, the chance to regain herself after so many failures and lost battles during 1999.

Here she was a skilful, hard headed warrior again; fighting against exhaustion in the nights when her son wept endlessly, fighting to keep him growing well with nothing but herself and the little pension she received from the shrine, fighting to keep her job once her son was old enough to be left in kindergarten.

She fought to survive and raise her child as a healthy, well educated, well mannered and well taken care for boy. She did not abandon him in the streets like her mother had done to her.

In her son she found her light, her strength, herself. Kishuu Arashi, the survivor and warrior, the powerful mother, the woman.

She felt complete.

She stopped crying because nothing was as bad as what she had already experienced in 1999. Her heart had become tougher, colder and calmer. It was a power and a bane at the same time.

She was not the sentimental wallowing mother. She was a loving mother, no doubt about it, but she was still a bit cold towards her son sometimes, times she wished to erase and cancel completely if only she knew how.

If she'd care about it she'd notice the eyes of other mothers in her son's kindergarten, in the playground. They thought she was a strict, heartless mother. She ignored the incarnated hyenas.

The chance to melt down completely and remove the last barrier between her and herself finally came one day.

She was in the kitchen, making dinner after having just returned from work.

Her son finished doing homework and came to nag her about pre-dinner snacks.

"You know you can't have any now or you won't have enough appetite to finish dinner!"

Her day at work was exhausting and irritating. Her son was showing symptoms of what his teacher hinted might be mild ADHD(2) which, she was sure, is a 'gift' from his father if it's true.

"Besides those snacks are nothing but junk food while the dinner I'm making is nutritious and healthy and you're going to finish it no matter what," she yelped across her shoulder.

Her son frowned, grabbing at the wall instead of stomping his feet and having a tantrum (she raised him very well).

"But I'm hungry."

"You'll just have to be patient and wait for dinner, it's almost ready."

"But I'm hungry…and I need food, I'm still in my growth spurt."

Arashi dropped the knife from her hand.

The tears in her eyes did not come from the onion's chemicals, released because she was cutting it; her tears came from her heart.

She turned to her son, slightly frightening the boy who never saw his mother with tears in her eyes.

She walked up to him and crushed at his feet, wrapping her arms tightly around him.

He returned her hug and asked her if she was alright and if she was in pain and was she hungry too because she was cranky (mother's friend, with the big burly husband and the invisible dog always says that when you're hungry you're cranky).

She placed her head on his little shoulder and let loose to eight years of sorrow and pain.

Then she cried of happiness for her son, and for her loneliness finally shattered. She cried for the last barrier in her heart now melted away. She cried for how well she managed to raise her son and hold herself together and cried for all the pains she had to go through to carry those two tasks.

When she finished she wiped the tears from her cheeks, kissed her son on his head and smiled at him so brightly, like she never ever did.

Her son smiled back at her and gave her kisses as well.

Then he asked if he could have the snacks _now_ please.

She nearly slapped him.

(end)

* * *

(1) Kendo sword.

(2) Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) is a neurobehavioral disorder that affects an estimated 3-7 percent of the school age population. Disrupts concentration on tasks, studies etc. makes a child impulsive, too active for his/her own sake due to often risky and/or careless act and very difficult to control within classrooms etc.


	5. Nokoru, Suoh and Akira

**Disclaimer: **I do not own X.

**Author's note: **_T**his story is an attempt to draw some kind of a background story for parts of X's characters**'** lives that Clamp did not light for us. It is not a statement but a mere opinion.**_

**Author's thanks: **To Trench Kamen who commented on the Arashi chapter on my Lj and to Iwannasleep from (thank you! I did write a Sei-Sei chapter but pulled it out. I will write another, better one soon).

And many great thanks to my beta Cait who paints my fics pink! .

* * *

**Imonoyama Nokoru, Takamura Suoh and Akira Ijuin – Backstage Actors.**

"The stars have changed their positions; they are in motion to show us a new future….

"Fates are reorganized and sealed, many lives will end…..or change forever…..

"The fate of our planet Earth hangs in the balance; will it be destroyed or will we be the ones to perish? ….

"The pieces are moving as warriors of both sides are already brandishing their weapons…..

"Dragons of Heaven….

"Dragons of Earth……"

Papers flew into the air with a burst, soaring high in the cosy room before falling down to the bed with large swinging arches or wild spinning flips.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! We won't have a single spare moment to throw a party!" the young man who spoke so far, the one who threw the papers in the air, wailed.

The other young man sighed and turned his back to the speaker, "Is that all you can think about in that context Kaicho?"

"Suooooooh, don't call me Kaicho again," the blond wiggled himself nearer to Suoh and wrapped an arm around the bigger man's waist.

"I will call you 'Kaicho' whenever you'll act like a third grader," resilient golden eyes turned to childish sapphire ones, daring them to a stare down competition.

Nokoru buried his face in Suoh's pillow and pouted.

Suoh turned his head forward again and sighed, exasperated. Since they've grown this close he found the blond's pouts were irresistible. But this is a very serious matter and his personal emotions should have nothing to do with his judgment over next year's events.

Nokoru nuzzled the small valley between Suoh's powerful shoulder blades, inhaling the man's scent and smiling happily. He wrapped his arm tighter around the muscular waist.

Suoh ran his finger idly across his lover's palm all the way up to the elbow where the rest of the arm disappeared behind his back.

"We will be accommodating the Dragons of Heaven?"

"Yes, well, some of them anyway."

"Oh?"

"Two of them are adults with apartments of their own."

"I see."

"One of them is a family man….he has a little girl, she'll be in kindergarten next year."

"Perhaps we should offer her a place in next year's class?"

"Hmm….I'm afraid the classes are organized and sealed already."

"Can't _we_ make room for her?"

"You're right."

Convinced of his chairman's renewed serious mood, Suoh rewarded Nokoru by turning to face him. He smiled softly and planted a kiss on that sweet little button nose.

Nokoru closed his eyes and titled his head backwards a little, asking for a deeper kiss.

Suoh sighed inwardly; his chairman was such a spoiled little thing. He was like a kitten; curling up to you and acting cutely to make you pet him some more.

"And the Dragons of Heaven who will be living here? How many are there?"

"Five….no, four….I think….it depends."

"Depends!"

"Well there's one in university age but he has an apartment of his own already so I don't know if he'll be living here or not."

"We'll offer him residence anyway. Although he has no record of a high school degree…"

Nokoru nodded and snuggled up closer to Suoh, rubbing against his lover's body seductively.

"Kaicho…..not now."

Nokoru whimpered and manoeuvred himself some more.

"Don't complain Kaicho, you're the one who brought up the subject in bed."

"Well I had to go over paperwork didn't I? And what other time was I left with but in bed?"

"If you would have done your paperwork in time instead of lingering around to make sure the café goes through the right re-designing, and if you wouldn't insist on going over the plans for the Salad Bowl's new gardening scheme you wouldn't need to go over this in bed!"

The idea behind Nokoru's light-headed behaviour sunk in fully enough to anger the blue haired man. He sat up and glared down at the blond beneath him.

"This is a very important topic Kaicho, why, the fate of humanity is at stake here! Look at all the papers, look how they're scattered and messy! How are we supposed to take this seriously with such a bad start?"

Nokoru, pouting and halfway in the pillow again, stared up at him like an abused puppy. He was still clinging to Suoh's side.

"Do you think this is another case of a lady in distress! Do you think it's just a silly missing file about a meeting next week! This is _for the sake of humanity_, it'll decide if we'll stay alive next year or not! Why can't you get it into your head!"

Nokoru let go of his lover and rolled to lie on his stomach, hugging the pillow and burying his chin into it.

"It's not like we're doing anything important really," his voice was low and mature now, no longer childish and silly.

Suoh blinked at his lover's exposed back.

"W-what do you mean?"

"We're just here to give them a place to live aren't we?"

"We….we'll put them into classes too."

Nokoru shot him a withering glare across his naked shoulder and turned his face to the pillow again.

"The heart of the divine protection! We keep the holy sword within our campus Nokoru; you can't overlook that as something unimportant."

"Bah! All we really do is supply electricity to that damned facility; the rest is done by everyone else, isn't it?"

"…Nokoru…"

"We never get to do the fun stuff do we? We never do anything of real value like fighting or the saving of lives or anything."

There was something very grave and important amongst the papers he gave Nokoru today; where was it?

Suoh began fishing for the papers across the bed. When he couldn't find what he wanted on the bed itself he began searching on the floor and under the huge, fancy, overused bed.

Nokoru followed him with his eyes and allowed a cunning smile to break through his foul mood.

"You're a very handsome man, Suoh"

The bodyguard, who was squatting on the floor gathering lost papers in the nude, glared at the blond so hard he could have set the man's pillow afire under him.

His golden eyes expanded in horror as he spotted the paper he was looking for, half buried under their nightstand. The discarded Jell-O tube dripped on it idly. Suoh stifled a panicked whimper.

He snatched the page from under the slow current and began wiping it with the sheet's edge.

"Great, absolutely brilliant" he hissed.

"Hmn?"

Suoh shook the half drenched paper before his lover's eyes "We have a meeting with Magami-san, where we'll be reviewing and discussing all the issues in these papers and what do we do with them? Look! Just look at this!"

Nokoru wiggled to sit up, drawing his knees under his chin lazily.

"Can you imagine the meeting tomorrow!" Suoh raved on, making Nokoru giggle inwardly at how his voice became an undignified high-pitch when he was distressed. "'I see you've brought all the papers I faxed you yesterday boys, but what's this? Where's the health issue papers?'

"'Oh we're sorry Magami-san, but it's not here because, well you see…we dripped lubricant all over it.'"

Nokoru burst out laughing under his lover's intense angry glare.

"It's not funny, Kaicho."

But Nokoru wouldn't stop; his laughter reached hysterical levels. He stopped ten minutes later when he noticed just how pissed off Suoh was.

Suoh stared at the blond in silence until he was absolutely sure the man was in a serious listening mode again.

He took a deep breath and gathered the other man into his arms, bringing the now dry patch of papers to his view.

"This one discusses the health and healing services we are to provide the Dragons of Heaven."

"There's a different page for that!"

"Yes….." Suoh's voice was uncharacteristically low, "It appears they will need very heavy healing, our little hospital's current equipment and staff will not do."

Nokoru's eyes met Suoh's, "But…..our hospital is the best in Tokyo, maybe in the whole of Japan…."

"According to Magami-san's demands it's not good enough."

Nokoru exhaled half a giggle, insulted, "Why? She expects us to be able to bring people back from the dead!"

"It appears the hospital will be doing almost that….." Suoh's silence meant the subject was not to be doubted, that they had no word in it.

"…..What are they asking for?"

"More experienced staff on the E.R, bigger surgery staff, better trained nurses….oh…and a small army of physiotherapists…."

Nokoru blinked in shock. When he stopped there was fear in his eyes, "Suoh…" he whispered, unable to say the words in any louder a tone, "What are we going to accommodate? What will they be doing to those kids!"

Suoh stared back, just as alarmed and grave. He embraced his lover, feeling the body in his arms shudder.

"This is serious….Suoh….."

"Yes….it is….."

"Why?"

"Why is it serious? I thought we already covered the whole 'fate of humanity in the balance' subject."

"No….I mean why those children? Why would they be in need of such heavy healing?"

Suoh couldn't find an answer to that. He tightened his embrace.

"One of them is only fourteen years old…..the other kids we'll accommodate aren't even old enough to drink…"

"I don't know Nokoru, fate is cruel."

"It is, isn't it?"

"Nokoru…."

"Hmmn?"

"We'll be needing a counsellor."

"Why?"

"Because there are going to be earthquakes all over the city and….well….families of our other students….I mean….."

"They might be hurt….."

"Exactly….."

"Oh shit."

"Nokoru!"

"What? You think you're the only one manly enough to use such words?"

"I thought you were the only one noble enough to not use them."

"Well think again. I found nothing better to describe the situation….well….except for 'FUBAR'."

"'FUBAR'….!"

"Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition; it's American slang from the second World War."

"……'FUBAR' it is then….you know too much Nokoru," Suoh allowed himself to chuckle into the heavy dark tension around them.

His lover sighed.

"It's going to be a tough year, 1999."

"…..Yes."

"Many people will be hurt."

"….I suppose…it's inevitable."

"Many people will die."

"……."

"And many will grieve……"

"…..Nokoru."

"Suoh," the fear was so deep in those bright blue eyes that, gazing into them, Suoh's heart twitched. The arms that encircled his body grew tighter, the fingers clawed at him desperately.

"Suoh….don't leave campus grounds next year," tears spilled down Nokoru's immaculate cheeks.

Suoh kissed them one by one, kissing his lovers' eyes shut as well.

"I won't, I promise."

"1999 will be a very tough year, a sad, bloody, horrid, grave year."

"Yes…."

"All the more reason to throw as many parties as possible!"

"**_KAICHO!_**"

* * *

The three old friends met half an hour before their original meeting's time with Magami Tokiko so they'd have time to get updated with each other's life since the last time they spoke.

Sat in the campus' Café Terrace, they found a secluded spot where they could enjoy a nice relaxed atmosphere and not be heard by too many people once Tokiko joined them.

As he walked towards their table, Suoh and Nokoru scanned Akira's approaching figure.

"Is it just me or did he gain weight?"

"It seems he did. I think he's growing a small belly"

"Beer belly?"

"Good home cooking of a devoted wife belly."

"…….I can see you've never eaten anything Utako-san cooks."

"She only brings us cakes and cookies and they seem extremely sweet so, no, I don't get the chance to eat anything she cooks….why?"

Nokoru giggled. "Let's just say that if he had only her home cooking to eat he'd starve to death by now. Or die of food poisoning."

"I see….his own home cooking belly?"

"I think he's gaining weight with the delight of married life, if you know what I mean," the blond winked and poked his tongue out.

"You lose weight from that, Nokoru. You burn energy when you're doing that, if I may remind you."

Nokoru leaned towards Suoh, looking seductive. "Well I'm not the one doing much, so I guess I wouldn't know."

Suoh blushed so hard it plunged deep beyond his collar and past his shoulders. His neat navy blue suit hid it, though. Knowing the ninja's body well enough, Nokoru knew exactly how low it went.

"Ah, so easy to fluster by mentioning matters of the heart in public; you're so sweet Suoh."

"He's practically here Kaicho, enough of that!"

"Aw, I didn't deserve a 'kaicho' now!"

"Hey you guys! What's up?"

Akira was greeted by a double-voiced, "Akira-kun, hello, please sit down!"

When they realized they said the same thing together they stared at each other and blushed.

"The two of you are so cute!" the youngest man chirped and took off his jacket, hung it on his chair and sat down.

A pair of golden eyes stared at Akira, twitching with terror. A pair of blue eyes stared at him in amazement.

"You….uh…."

Akira folded his arms on his chest "Oh, c-o-m-e o-n, Kaicho, I'm not dumb you know."

"Please refer to me as 'Nokoru', it's high time you got used to it."

The young man blushed and looked away.

Noting that Suoh was still in shock, Nokoru beamed a smile at Akira, "So, how is the little missy?"

"Oh Utako-san's great! She's wonderful; as usual that is...tee hee."

"I heard she was feeling a bit faint lately, all weak and…nauseous… do you have something to tell us Akira-kun?" the blond nudged the man next to him.

Akira stared at him vacantly, "….Yeah, she caught a summertime stomach virus, something she ate in a shady ramen stand on her way back home from campus."

Suoh wondered if it would be weird for whoever happened to be watching them to see him and Nokoru suddenly crush their faces into the table.

"But she's way better now, she's up and about again."

Nokoru sighed, "Well….that's good then isn't it…."

"What about children Akira-kun," Suoh cut to the chase, tired of Nokoru's polite way of poking at Akira's strange marriage.

Akira stared at him, shocked.

Suoh stifled a yelp when Nokoru kicked him under the table.

"Utako wants to finish university first, and then have kids."

"Ah, I see."

Nokoru wondered if bad cooking can deem someone impotent.

Suoh leaped to his feet, "There's Magami-san," the other two did the same, bowing deeply before the bespectacled woman walking towards them.

"Hello there! My, what lovely young men I'm fated to deal with!" Tokiko chirped as soon as the men straightened their backs and faced her.

"Anyone here single by any chance? Tee hee," she winked before taking the chair Nokoru pulled out for her.

"Oh, I'm married and they're gay so, no, I guess. Sorry," Akira chirped back.

Suoh felt the frozen shower of horror pour down his spine. Nokoru paled and laughed nervously.

"Ah, that's fine. My sister was the same; gay, not married, that is," Tokiko shrugged and motioned for a waiter to come to their table.

"What'll you drink, boys?"

"Tea please, thank you!...Kai, eh, Nokoru-san, Suoh-san, what will you drink? Why are you staring at me like that? Have a seat."

Nokoru ordered himself a glass of cider, and a strong black coffee with cardamom and no sugar for Suoh.

As soon as the waiter was out of their hair, Tokiko grabbed for the files in a small neat plastic folder placed before Nokoru.

Poking her glasses up her nose, she scanned through her faxes and the documents Nokoru attached to each of them.

She nodded enthusiastically whenever she read something she liked, even made encouraging remarks about the chairman's good ideas when she came across one.

When she saw something she didn't like or regarded as unfitting and unsatisfactory she nearly glared Nokoru's eyes out and made her remarks sharp as Suoh's mom's training daggers.

It seemed that for Clamp Campus, improvising wasn't an option; things were to be run the way Tokiko said, to the smallest detail, or they will not be run by Nokoru (which was heavily hinted) at all.

Finally Nokoru'd had enough of the woman's snappy remarks. "Surely you don't think I don't know this campus' ins and outs, cans and can'ts. Why do you insist on getting things clear to the _tiniest_ detail? If a problem comes up in this department I'll have it fixed immediately, you really shouldn't bother yourself with such…."

"Imonoyama-kun! May I remind you that, though you are the current chairman of Clamp campus, you are not the one who built it nor are you one of those who were around to see this place built," she leaned forward until the blond had no other choice but to look directly into her pointy brown eyes, "This place was built _for_ next year, not in order to be your school, not for you to run it."

Nokoru mouthed a bit before giving up and turning his head away. This was the fate of humanity they were dealing with here….and she was a lady. He couldn't snarl back, no matter how much he wanted to.

Once they'd smoothed every problem and came up with solutions for everything, the sky was dark and the air around them filled with the calls of cicadas. Tiny fireflies filled the grass and trees in the nearby park with blinking tiny stars. The Terrace buzzed with students out to enjoy the lovely night.

Tokiko looked past Akira's shoulder, at the park. Then she turned and scanned the people around them in the Café Terrace and the lights in the windows of the great library at the bottom of which the Terrace lay. She sighed deeply and removed her glasses to clean them with the napkin on which her cake spoon lay.

She ordered two slices of cheese and crumb cake. She didn't ask what the boys wanted.

Once the slices lay before her she grabbed her spoon (the one she used on her cup of orange flavoured jelly and Special Clamp Hot Fudge Cupcake she ordered before the slices she had now) as if it were a murder weapon.

"Bon appetit," Nokoru smiled sweetly, trying to bitch in subtext.

Hunched over her slices, weapon of murder in hand, her eyebrows highly set was the only indication she understood Nokuro's remark. She placed a bite in her mouth, finished chewing it and, without looking up, asked them calmly, "Have you ever seen a car crash boys?"

The boys remained silent.

Tokiko took another bite, "Ever seen pictures fresh from the scene of a terrorist bombing attack?"

Silence.

Another bite, a bigger one this time. Then she took a large gulp from her third milkshake, "I see. Make sure you lay your eyes on loads of those two before we meet for the last time boys or you'll never be prepared for the first thing you'll do for humanity's fate."

The boys stuck to their silence.

"The holy sword will be born from my body, which means that it will emerge from me. Since the sword is almost as big as my body it will rip me apart. I'll be, to make a bad pun, all over the place."

Akira gasped, the Terrace's fancy Venetian street lamps reflecting in his tears.

"If you're going to stand there like three idiots behaving the way he does," stabbing the air Akira-wards with her little fork, "you might as well not be there at all. My nephew will need someone strong to pick him up from the shock he'll receive and deliver him safely here. You must be prepared."

"I see," Nokoru broke their silence finally, his tone grave and low now, "then that is what we will do. Please, Magami-san, worry not about our part in next year. Your nephew will be in good hands and so will the rest of the Seals."

Tokiko stabbed her last piece of cake and sighed, "If he joins the Seals, that is."

"Where would you prefer him to be?" Suoh leaned forward, placing his second cup of coffee on the table.

Tokiko scanned the Café around them quickly, "It's too crowded here to continue this conversation."

She got up, taking her handbag with her and tucking it neatly under her arm.

The boys climbed to their feet and bowed their goodbyes.

"I know I might have sounded like a bitch to you today but if that's what it takes to get things done properly then that's what I'll be."

She scanned them with soft eyes now, as sad and heavy as their own, "I…..I'm really, really sorry about this boys. I'll bring you the doll and the board next week. Until then, goodbye."

Nokoru cried that night and begged Suoh not to set foot outside of Clamp campus next year.

Suoh hugged his lover tightly and stated his love for the blond endlessly, begging Nokoru to make the same promises.

Akira sank into a small depression and refused to eat or sleep, which ended when he fainted from low blood sugar levels in the first 36 hour hospital shift he had after the meeting. With encouragement from his wife he recovered and did his best to prepare himself for the year to come.

Utako suggested they try to conceive, her last semester was at its end. Akira thought of next year, the year their baby would be due and immediately cancelled the idea.

During endless preparations, hiring and firing of half their hospital staff, fortification of the Heart of the Divine Protection, the tear-drenched filming of Tokiko's last words to her kin, many nights of endless alcohol and drowning sad sex, the trio fought to accept and understand what was about to happen next year.

When Nokoru pushed the Monou's sliding door open he, Suoh and Akira were prepared, as well as the rest of Clamp campus.

(End)


End file.
